Mriana - 30 January 2008 06:31 AM

psikeyhackr - 30 January 2008 05:04 AM

Now that is odd.  If Paramount was even trying to pretend they weren’t stealing from B5 why just transpose the numbers?

psik

Are you sure it wasn’t the other way around?  ...
I forgot where I found the pic, but Majel is pictured as some ambassador or something on B5. I forgot the character’s name though.  :(

JMS pitched B5 to Paramount before DS9 was created.

DS9 was a clear break from the Star Trek paradigm.

She played the widow of the recently deceased emperor. 

Lady Marela?

And Billy Mumy who played Lanier appeared in an episode of DS9.  He did sci-fi back in the days of the original Trek, Lost In Space.

psik

Yes that is the character Majel played.  Yes and Bill Mumy does a fine job with the characters he played too, esp as a Membari.  I would say there is obviously no hard feelings between the Paramount and JMS if they can share actors that way.  Of course, I don’t think Majel had a contract that kept her from doing other shows either.

retrospy - 28 January 2008 10:57 AM

I understand that there may be some controversy over the canon.

The latest rumor is that there are supposed to be Romulans in it.  According to the original series, the first Romulan outbreak was 100 years ago.  They popped up again in “Balance of Terror”, and it was strongly implied that they learned their lesson.  In Next Generation, it was also stated that they had laid low ever since then.  So...I dunno! 

Here is an interesting video showing more actors that crossed over between B5 and Star Trek

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu3Cvwx0yDg

A number of them I didn’t know about and couldn’t recognize due to alien makeup.

Here is a blast from the past.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhnXMSKNz8w&feature=user

Extras

Perhaps the most compelling extras in the box set of Star Trek: The Original Series: Season Three are the two versions of the pilot episode, “The Cage.” As any fan of the series knows, the original pilot “The Cage” was incorporated into the two-part Season One episode, “The Menagerie” in a creative effort to save money for the increasingly costly show. In disk seven, fans have the unique opportunity to view “The Cage: The Restored Version” and “The Cage: The Original Version.”

After reviewing these two versions back-to-back, I came to the conclusion that I was not enough of a Trekkie to really distinguish a substantial difference between them, except that parts of “The Cage: The Original Version” are in black and white and all of “The Cage: The Restored Version” is in color. However, “The Cage: The Original Version” has the welcome addition of a brief introduction from 1986, “The Unseen Pilot,” with Gene Roddenberry. As Roddenberry explains, the portion of “The Cage: The Original Version” that is in black and white is all that remains of the original footage that was prepared for the pilot episode. In addition to expounding on some technical details surrounding the pilot, Roddenberry portrays himself as a bit of a rebel in the world of TV programming in his efforts to mask Star Trek’s social critique behind a traditional western action/adventure piece set in space. None of this is revelatory to fans of the show or anyone who has seen more than two episodes. Neither is the history of the pilot episode, which was rejected for being too cerebral and strange. Rebel or no, Roddenberry heeded NBC’s warning to follow a more traditional blueprint for his second try at the series which became the Star Trek phenomenon.

http://www.tvdvdreviews.com/startrek3.html

psik

Here is the DS9 episode that I think epitomizes the difference between DS9 and TNG more than any other.  Though I like both series DS9 wins by a length.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9echp2kCHV4

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34NLVjzvahE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIPnMdLH7RQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2O4q-nPmvE

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uc4_JnKflAs

psik

Surely Lexx is far more accurate than ST or B5 about things to come!

i don’t believe i’ve ever seen one full episode of B5, and DS9 i did not enjoy.  TNG is one of the best of the Star Trek series… which is why movies were made with that cast and crew, and not with the crew of Voyager, or DS9… and will never be made of the crew in the new Enterprise… Not having seen B5 i don’t feel i can really comment on it’s sci-fi.  Star Trek however i have seen lots from the original series, and almost all of TNG, and can say that the time they live in would have to be a pretty awesome place to live, and i hope our own future is half as interesting.

RobertScorpio wrote:

DS9 vs TNG
Again we don’t agree. I don’t think TNG is aging well at all. And I think DS9s more complex story writing is holding up quite well. And for whatever reason, it seems to me that the fans of TREK prefer TNG over DS9. Poll after poll shows this to be true.

TNG is more vanilla, thus more appealing to the masses. But ratings success can not be the final say. Because, as I have mentioned elswhere, Baywatch got higher ratings than TNG. So does that make Baywatch the better show? I hope not.

And it must also be pointed out that TNG came around with very little other choices to watch in terms of first run sydication and network scif. DS9 had to deal with SEAQUEST..BABYLON 5..Stargate.., not to mention TNG, and far more sydicated competition.

TNG, to me, never had really deep character growth. It has some, but not as much as DS9. DS9 is great because everyone, from Sisko to Nog, grew in ways no one could have predict. When you can’t predict where a show is going, I think it mirrors reality.

TNG may garner all the numbers and get all the hoopla. But for me? DS9 was a labor of love for the fans of TREK who were ready for more than just retreaded, but improved TOS.

DWF wrote:

TNG has continued to gain new fans ans stay on the air every since it first started in 1987 DS9 OTOH was beiing cut off the air before their final seasons in some markets during their original run and it’s future on Spike is shakey as well.

DS9’s storylines and characters aren’t attracting people the way TNG has continued to do over the years. I’m sorry but DS9 was that much of a standout show it would’ve been that way when it originally aired but they trouble beating the other shows in the ratings and creatively as well.

I don’t see the “vanilla” complaint myself especially seeing as how the attempts to surpass TNG with the other shows seems to have fallen flat over the years. But then I nver did think that DS9 was all that great and Voyager and Enterprise is all that bad.

TheMasterOfOrion wrote:

Enterprise could have been a great show but it wasn’t executed very well. DS9 had some great actors and great episodes but I don’t really consider it Trek. It was the black sheep of the family, spent too much time de-constructing Roddenberry, it had too much religion, too much soap and frankly I think Babylon-5 did the story telling better.

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=1367596

http://ds9tng.ytmnd.com/

I think whether someone prefers DS9 over TNG or vice versa says more about their personalities then it does about the shows.  DS9 was a very different Star Trek.  I have seen a reviewer who says it wasn’t even Star Trek.  If I were to go that far I would even say that is why I like it so much.  The self righteous goody two shoes attitude of TNG made me want to puke sometimes.  I wanted to shoot Picard in the head at the end of The Pegasus episode.  But sometimes he was really cool as in Starship Mine but I suppose that is an inevitable result of having a lot of different writers.  But I am a sci-fi fan not a Star Trek fan and I got into sci-fi before TOS came on the air.  Plenty of the original Outer Limits episodes were better than Star Trek but they had that darker aspect of reality that shows up in DS9 also.

psik

On actors that cross-over between B5 and Trek I’d say it’s no biggie because most actors who do one SciFi series will then go on to do another ... it’s like gaining access to a club, once you’re in and the fans/producers like you you’re in. As a result you get to see many of the same actors with regularity in many SF/F shows ... sounds like it could be boring but in actual fact we fans tend to welcome them back with open arms.

Kyu